By Dean Bubley, Disruptive Analysis
Summary: Mobile broadband data traffic is growing extremely quickly, and while capacity is being added, operators need to face the realities of real-world constraints and manage policies more effectively. They need to balance the need for profitability against consumer and regulatory expectations for fair and transparent network management.
This will increasingly mean that any interventions in data transmission will need to be “bearer-aware” – i.e., making decisions based on what is actually going on in the radio network mapped onto user activity, rather than using blanket or arbitrary policies enforced further back in the network. The addition of new bearer types such as femtocells, LTE or WiFi offload will add additional complexity. This will also need to transfer through to the operator’s billing and charging systems, so that pricing for data use is more closely aligned with the actual costs of providing services.
Background
This white paper covers the potential for bearer-aware policy management and charging in mobile data networks, as well as the role of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) infrastructure in enabling this. It has been written by the independent industry analyst and consulting firm Disruptive Analysis, and sponsored by Continuous Computing, as part of an initiative to promote thought-leadership, differentiation and innovative networking concepts for the mobile broadband and network policy-management marketplace. The opinions expressed are Disruptive Analysis’ own, and are not specific endorsements of any vendor’s or operator’s products or strategy.
Introduction
A “bearer” in a mobile communications context is a particular way of connecting to the network – 2G, 3G, Long Term Evolution (LTE), WiFi and other technologies are all bearers. This document considers when and how it might useful for the control and charging parts of the operator to have more awareness of which bearer is being used, and how it is operating.
In the past, the telecoms industry “establishment” has often suggested that applications and services should be bearer-agnostic, with the core and service layers of the network behaving identically, however the user has connected. The idea is that services can be abstracted from the means of connection.
The reality is turning out to somewhat different. Different bearers have different properties, and this reflects on what services can be provided, how well they work, and which is the “best” for any particular circumstance. This can be considered from both users’ and operators’ perspectives:
- From the operator’s point of view, different bearers have different levels of performance and reliability, coverage patterns, costs of service delivery, likelihood of congestion and different degrees of control and flexibility.
- From the user’s point of view, various different bearer technologies have implications for service speed and latency, connection set-up time, ease of user, power consumption and of course, price.
These variables present a challenge for the policy management and charging infrastructure being installed by many operators, in order to control exploding mobile broadband traffic. The industry is still at a very early stage of understanding how best to structure traffic management and pricing for data traffic, so as to optimise simultaneously for:
- Minimal network congestion and optimised performance.
- Lower levels of CapEx needed for network expansion.
- More granular and segmented pricing for data, that increases average revenues, while retaining tariff plans that are easily understood by customers.
- Potential value-added opportunities from new business models, such as application prioritisation.
- Compliance with tighter regulatory observation of traffic management, Net Neutrality and policy.
